


Sinful Living

by audreyslove



Series: Home [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 08:23:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17362466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyslove/pseuds/audreyslove
Summary: Home verse: moving in.  prompt by @starscythe





	Sinful Living

It’s midway through January when he finally has the courage to bring it up. Regina has to get a new apartment, and she’s searched, has found a place not too far from him, and is debating signing a lease.

A lease for a _year._

They’ve only been together for… well, less than a month, but he knows he won’t need a _year_ to ask her what he already wants to ask. She’s already fretting about buying furniture again. Moving and shipping so much of her stuff across country (and then back) already cost her a small fortune, selling her furniture at an extreme discount also took a financial toll.

She needn’t worry like this.

“Please don’t sign,” he says in response, after she asks him yet again whether he thinks the lease looks good.

“What? Why? Did I miss something problematic in there?”

“No, it’s fine, it’s standard. That’s not what I mean. I mean please don’t sign a lease for a year. Don’t go to the trouble of getting new furniture, when…” he trails off, having a cowardly moment where he can’t voice what is too soon to voice.

Her head tilts, eyebrows raised, and she asks, “When…?”

He finds the courage somewhere. “Well, I already have all the furniture we need, you helped me pick some of the newer stuff out, so I know you like it. And I know it’s too soon to ask you to move in — it’s not, for me, I already feel like we’ve been dating for years, honestly, and you have spent nearly every night here since you came back. It already feels like you live here and I love it. But I know you want to take it slower. And that’s fine. But Mary Margaret offered you her place, right? You don’t need furniture or a year lease. You could just live with her and David for awhile, right? Until you feel comfortable moving in with me. But I don’t want to wait another year to live with you. I just don’t.”

She bites her lip, considering, he thinks. He tries not to get nervous.

She breathes out a slow, measured breath, then looks at him almost apologetically. Shit, this was not what he had planned.

“My mother— even with my dad muzzling her, she will have something to say about me shacking up with a man less than a year after a broken engagement.” She shakes her head at herselfc as if she knows it shouldn’t matter yet somehow it does.

He squeezes her shoulder and shrugs.

“So don’t tell her. Give her the new address and when she comes to visit in September as she always does, don’t let her in the bedroom closet, and I’ll hide my toiletries. Or keep them there, and you can tell her I so often spend the night I keep my stuff here. Because you know, of the constant sex we have. Give old Cora a heart attack.”

Regina laughs, but does not relent. Robin quickly comes up with a less salacious idea..

“Or, you know, just keep telling her you’re staying with Mary Margaret for as long as you think is necessary. You know she will cover you.”

He watches her think, watches her tamp down her smile. She’s happy.

“You really want me to move in with you?”

“Terribly so. I love you, Regina. I don’t want to spend many nights apart from you. I’m lucky, because we haven’t so far, and I can tell you, without a doubt, I’ll be asking you to move in with me in a few months. And I’m confident you will accept the offer.” His voice goes snarky with false confidence. “So, don’t make it more complicated by adding furniture you’re just going to sell, or leases you will have to negotiate yourself out of, because trust me, I can be very convincing when there is need.”

“Is that so?” she asks. “I’m very hard to convince.”

“I’m up for the challenge,” Robin teases back.

“Let me think it over,” she says, putting the lease aside.

It’s not until after dinner at his place (which Regina cooking with pans she had brought over after Daniel mailed hers back), that she clears her throat and raises a glass of half empty wine, a coy little smile on her face.

“Congratulate me on my new place,” she says softly.

He raises his glass, unsure of what’s happening, exactly. “Where….which did you decide?”

“Well, I considered living with Mary Margaret, but you know, I didn’t want to impose and just invite myself, and I had already turned down her offer….”

“Oh,” Robin says, his heart dipping down, trying to control his disappointment from showing.

“But luckily for us, she doesn’t take no for an answer, and has asked me to move in practically every day. Including today. And this time, I said yes.”

Robin smiles broadly. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she says, as Robin gives her a toast, clinking her glass with his.

.::.

She moves in with Mary Margaret.

Technically.

She makes it a habit to force herself to stay at least two nights there.

But sometimes Robin stays with her on those nights.

Mary doesn’t mind. In fact she and David seem to like having friends to drink and chat and watch netflix together.

It’s going well with Robin. Ridiculously well. There are disagreements, sure, but even those are often comical, ending without bitter feelings or words unspoken. She feels completely comfortable with him.

Living with him is actually easier than she thought it would be. It’s just so natural.

Still, she maintains a place with Mary Margaret and David, clinging to her own independence, her “just-in-case”, because it’s foolish to rush in to living with someone after dating them for such a short time.

Until one day in April, when Regina finds herself frustrated that her wardrobe is practically split in two and she can never remember where each article of clothing resides. That’s when Robin springs it on her.

“It would be much easier if your things were all in one place, wouldn’t it?” He asks, moving towards the closet.

The apartment has both a walk in closet and a sliding door one. Robin had previously used both, though frankly, the things he needs to hang are limited.

Now he opens it for her to show her it’s completely empty, save for a few of her clothes that she had left in there.

“There’s room for you here,” he says softly. “You and all of your clothes. Move in with me, please.”

Regina arches her eyebrows, inspecting the closet.

She teases him. “You want me to move in _here_ with you? I figured we’d find a new place together whenever your lease was up. You know my feelings on this pretentious apartment.”

“That’s true. But you know, you already practically live here. The doorman already knows your name.”

She rolls her eyes. “Just the fact you have a _doorman_ in this little city is proving my point.”

He smirks. “We have to tip him during Christmas. Him and all the staff.”

“This place is ridiculous,” Regina groans, smiling. “It’s trying to mimic the luxury apartments of Manhattan except we’re in this poor little city in Jersey.”

“Indeed,” Robin smiles at her. “And you’ve spent about four nights a week in this ridiculous apartment for the last few months.”

She blushes and shrugs. He’s not wrong.

It seems as good of a time as any to confess, so she does.

“It’s not that I hate this place so much. It’s that I associate it with… people showing off to young co-ed’s, trying to get in their pants. And we do see that a lot, just walking in and out of it everyday.”

“True,” Robin concedes. “But that’s not us.”

“Was it you?” she asks, her heart racing a bit at the confrontation. “This place isn’t you. I couldn’t figure out why you’d live there until I saw you hitting on a girl telling her about this place, and… I guess that’s when I started to hate this apartment.”

“Because I was talking to another woman about living in it?” he asks, eyes twinkling, “You weren’t jealous, were you?”

She rolls her eyes. “I was _annoyed_. With you. And then I became more annoyed every time I saw you with another woman. I was just… fine, I was jealous.”

He laughs and sits down at the side of the bed, urging her to sit next to him.

“I bought this place because weeks before I moved my mom found out about a shooting in a nearby townhouse. A robbery gone wrong. The victim actually worked at our company somewhere… I didn’t know him, I had just been offered the position. My mum found the news article and freaked. She begged me to move here. Because the website boasts all these security details. You know, door man, FOB system, all that jazz.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s never a place I would have picked for myself but now that I’m here, I like it. I love my commute. And I like my apartment. I haven’t used the address to impress women. When did all this happen, that you remember me bragging about the place?”

“Not long after you and Marian broke up,” she admits. “You kind of, um, got around back then.”

“Not really,” he chuckles, then scratches the back of his head shyly. “Since I broke up with Marian, let’s see…. I’ve been with... well you know Ariel.” Regina does, they’ve talked about her before. “Then there was Guin of course,” he says, and Regina rolls her eyes, causing him to stop and tilt his head in confusion. “What?”

“I can’t remember,” Regina smiles at him shaking her head. “Had she finished college yet?”

Robin laughs. “She was 24! She was Mary Margaret’s age!” he says defensively. “Wait, is she the one… is she the one you were talking about? The one I supposedly talked up this place to?”

Regina crinkles her nose. “Yes.”

Robin laughs.

“I wasn’t bragging. She was trying to talk me into going back to her place where she had five roommates, and I just mentioned I had a closer, more private place myself. I only talked it up because her place sounded like a mess, and I wanted to get laid but I didn’t want to dodge her two male roommates and three best friends to do it.”

Regina smirks. “Ok, that’s funny. Even if I hate thinking of you with someone else.”

“That was one night,” Robin laughs. “And trust me, you have _nothing_ to be jealous of, you know that already.”

She does, but she won’t concede that at all.

“Who else were you with?” she asks. There’s no point in acting like she isn’t curious.

Robin looks uneasy with answering. She frowns. “Come on. You know all of mine. I’m not even asking who you were with _before_ Marian. Just after.”

“There was Elsa, the girl who John sort of set me up with. But, um, we never went all the way, so to speak. She always stopped to talk or… I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right. I didn’t think she was into it. So that sort of fizzled fast.”

“Who else?” Regina asks, raising her eyebrows.

Robin exhales slowly and dramatically. “You can’t tell anyone.”

Oh.

Regina raises her eyebrows. “Who am I going to tell? Why would I be telling anyone about my boyfriend’s former sex life?”

“Right, it’s just that… I think she might actually murder me if I told anyone. It was… um. Victoria.”

Regina frowns, searching her memory for a Victoria that she knows. “Victoria? Victoria who? I don’t think I’ve met a—” and then it falls into place. She gasps. “Victoria _Belfrey?”_ She asks, “As in the Director of Internal Audits? That hard ass?”

“Yeah,” Robin says sheepishly. “She was around late one night and I was also there working on a project. And she yelled at me for whatever, some overdue paperwork that wasn’t even my responsibility… and somehow, I’m not sure how, she propositioned me, I said yes… um, and we had sex in her office. And after she gave me a glass of whiskey, thanked me, then and told me she trusted me to be discreet and to not make future interactions unpleasant. Some love story, huh?”

She’s unable to keep herself from asking, “How is she? She seems so… frigid.”

Robin shakes his head, his eyes wide open. “She’s _not_ frigid. But not easy to satisfy. She barked orders at me.”

“Sounds like me.”

“No, you tell me how to please you. You offer directions. That’s very sexy. I’m not going to lie, I was into being ordered that way too, but… it was too intense. She was telling me what position to be in, where to look… okay, she slapped me across the face when I didn’t grab her ass hard enough.”

Regina laughs. “But you still… made it work?”

Robin laughs and shrugs. “Sex in an office at night with a woman who is sort of my boss, despite the terror she induced, it was a scene right out of a porno and definitely a fantasy of mine. Didn't have too much trouble performing.”

“Did she get off?”

Robin nods, obviously trying to hide the pride he must feel for this night, then amends, “It’s possible she was just humoring me, of course. But she doesn’t seem the type to give false praise or worry about entertaining people’s egos.”

“True,” Regina answers, eyeing him with even more respect if that were possible. “I think I might be impressed.”

He’s all flushed and embarrassed. “Eh, I had just broken up with Marian, I was horny and a little in need of attention, and she was there — mostly to give me negative attention, somehow even during… but I can’t say it was entirely unenjoyable. But I’d never want to do it again. She’s too, um, severe. And emotionless.”

Regina snorts. “Good. I don’t think I’d like it if you fucked her again.”

She watches his face go worried. She didn’t mean it like that, but it’s clear he thinks she does. She waves him off, but he ignores her efforts to make light of this, walking towards her slowly and cupping her chin. “I have no desire to sleep with anyone else. Ever again. I swear it. I know we didn’t start in a way that, um, makes it seem like I honor monogamy—”

“We both have that record,” Regina reminds. “But only one of us cheated on her fiancé.”

“I never cheated on Marian.” he concedes.. “But I wanted to, when we were having problems and I met you. But even then, as sex starved and frustrated as I was, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have with anyone but you.”

“You wouldn’t have, even with me,” she says with a hint of bitterness. “I’m the one who cheated. Let’s not pretend otherwise.”

“Oh, believe me, if you seemed interested and there was liquor, I would have jumped at the opportunity, Marian or not,” Robin says easily. “And what happened with us I did full well knowing you were engaged. That means what I did isn’t any better or worse than what you did. We aren’t any different, here, you and I. But I would never throw away a loving relationship like this, not for anyone else, certainly not for a random romp. I’ll never do that to you.”

“I won’t do that to you, either,” Regina promises.

“I know. I trust you. Our circumstances were special. I just… if you’re in any way worried about moving in because you think I might wander—“

“I’m not,” Regina smiles. “I’m not worried about that. I trust you completely.”

He smiles back at her. “Good.”

“But the next time you’re craving want an office fuck—“

“I’ll beg you to indulge me. Or just wait until I get home and take you against my desk at home.”

Regina snorts. “Perfect.”

“If you don’t mind, I have asked a question you’ve yet to answer. And the suspense is killing me.”

She doesn’t respond to him immediately. She kisses him instead, helps him take off his shirt while she takes off hers.

Something related to hearing about all those other women has her desperate to fuck him, to make their memory more recent, to remind herself that they belong to one another.

“I’ll move in with you,” she whispers as he strips her that way he does, fast yet gentle and smooth.

He smiles back — the goofy, lopsided smile. “Thank god,” he murmurs, kissing up her thigh. “Never asked a woman to do that before. Was beginning to worry I was doing it wrong.”

She laughs and then immerses herself in the feeling of his tongue on her, her heart warmed by the thought that of everyone he’s been with, she is the only one with whom he’d ever want to completely share his home.

He may have fucked other women — at least one woman she will have to see semi-regularly. But none of that matters, because he is making a _life_ with her.

It’s a week later that she’s moving out of Mary Margaret’s and David’s guest room, who both refuse to accept the next month’s rent, saying it was their pleasure to have her, that they still hope she and Robin will come over for nights of drinking and take out and crash in “their” old room.

Regina walks into the pretentious lobby, where fuckboys litter the property like fallen leaves, young co-eds and early 20-something girls in too tight, too short dresses wearing a face full of makeup on the arm of young men in suits that aren’t correctly tailored, the decadent fixtures screaming false claims of wealth and opulence, she cannot help but laugh.

None of that bothers her anymore (the rent _is_ too high, frankly, but it’s walking distance from her work and affords her nooners with her boyfriend, plus walking distance from bars, which also affords her the opportunity to, well, spend nights out with her boyfriend before dragging him back home). This is her home and these are her, let’s call it “quirky neighbors”. This apartment with its needless amenities (okay she loves the gym and the free breakfasts are lovely) is, quite frankly, her favorite place that she’s ever lived.

It’s an apartment she shares with the person she loves most in this world, after all.


End file.
